Why did a 13-year-old quarterback and aspiring engineer take her own life?

Na'imah McDonald died by suicide in January 2017. Her mother and cousin are now trying to raise awareness about mental health to prevent suicide.
Rick Wood / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Merqueesha McDonald and her niece Erica Williams-Clark, a senior at Milwaukee High School of the Arts, talk about the suicide of Merqueesha's 13-year-old daughter, Na'imah, in an effort tor raise awareness about mental health challenges.(Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Editor's note: If you or someone you know is dealing with suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at (800) 273-8255 or text "Hopeline" to the National Crisis Text Line at 741-741.

Each day began with a lie.

As she left for work, Merqueesha McDonald told herself she would be picking up her 13-year-old daughter, Na'imah, after school. Maybe they would talk about football practice, a new crush, or an engineering program her daughter was excited about.

Ever since Merqueesha left Milwaukee last winter to move in with family in Florida, she'd started each day with this fabrication until she couldn't anymore. As she pulled into the parking lot at work one July day, she was overwhelmed by a panic attack.

For 13 years, Merqueesha had built her life around her daughter, squeezing in work and college around Na'imah's needs.

As a single mom, Merqueesha had chaperoned field trips, supervised roller-skating dates, made pancakes for midnight music-writing sessions. She tried to impart lessons, like that the meanest kids might be hurting the most. And she had to laugh when Na'imah would purposely creep her out by slinking up on her bed and staring at her right as she was waking up.

But Merqueesha also saw a worrisome side to her daughter. Na'imah would withdraw and go days when she hardly ate. Merqueesha struggled for years to get Na'imah consistent therapy. She finally got her into an intensive, in-home program, and Na'imah seemed to be thriving. Then Merqueesha was told her daughter no longer needed it.

Na'imah McDonald in her basketball uniform.(Photo: Family photo)

Na'imah died by suicide in her bedroom Jan. 17.

“She was dealing with something in her mind that she did not understand," Merqueesha said. "I believe that if we had the proper resources, my child would have been here."

Na'imah is among more than 75 children under age 18 who killed themselves in southeastern Wisconsin over the last decade. Youth suicide rates have been rising nationwide since 2007, after years of declining.

So far this year, seven people under age 18 from Milwaukee County have taken their own lives. It's the highest number county officials have seen in the 14 years covered by their database. On average, there have been about three youth suicides per year.

“The increase is not just in completed suicides, but also in serious suicide attempts and hospitalizations,” he said, “And this year is particularly bad.”

Consider the numbers:

Wisconsin’s teen suicide rate exceeded the national rate every year but two between 2000 and 2015. In 2015, the most recent year with available data, 26 Wisconsin youth died by suicide.

Self-harm – such as cutting and intentional overdoses — caused Milwaukee County youth to be hospitalized nearly 600 times in 2014, according to the most recent data available. That was a jump from 328 in 2013 and 158 in 2012.

Suicidal thoughts are common. About 27% of sixth, seventh and eighth graders surveyed this spring in Milwaukee Public Schools said they'd seriously thought about killing themselves. And 14% said they had made an attempt.

Symptoms of depression are widespread and often untreated. About 33% of the 7,000 surveyed middle schoolers reported having experienced symptoms of depression. About 86% said they'd never been treated for a mental health or emotional problem.

The rising suicide problem appears to align with growing mental health challenges in kids and teenagers, like those that Na'imah was dealing with. The most common risk factor for suicide is mental illness, a condition that affects the brain – primarily, depression.

Dena Radtke, manager of social work and transition services for MPS, sees demands rising on staff throughout the district.

"Our staff are dealing with so many more mental health issues than they have in the past," said Radtke. "I think there's a lot of unmet needs."

The struggles are not unique to children in poverty or the City of Milwaukee.

"In one day, the (mobile urgent treatment) team has been in a million-dollar home and a home condemned with no furniture in it. When it starts to fail for people, it doesn't look a lot different in suburbia than it does in 53206," said Dykstra, referring to one of the city's poorest ZIP codes.

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Merqueesha McDonald sits in the front row at A Church with a Purpose, 2535 W. Hadley St., Milwaukee, during the visitation in January for her daughter, Na'imah McDonald, 13, who committed suicide on Jan. 17. Michael Sears / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Interested in this topic? You may also want to view these photo galleries:

Over the next several months, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Kids in Crisis series will share the stories of young people like these who've dealt with mental health challenges, fallen in crisis and found paths of coping. We will take an in-depth look at the causes of mental health crises and report about best-practice solutions in southeastern Wisconsin and beyond.

'My baby had a stare'

Na'imah was a trailblazer. She quarterbacked the football team at Rufus King International Middle School, breezing past those who laughed at her for being the only girl trying out.

She wrote poetry and music and taught herself to play guitar. She signed herself up for summer classes at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. She had been accepted to Milwaukee’s Riverside High School, which she hoped would prepare her to study engineering at Marquette University.

A fun day for Na'imah was buying old electronics at Goodwill and taking them apart to figure out how they worked.

Little screws remained scattered around the house after Na'imah was gone. Merqueesha's family found them as they cleaned out the home. They kept everything Na'imah had made, down to the last grocery list she wrote for her mom days before she died.

The "Kids in Crisis" series examines barriers to mental health care and seeks solutions. As teen suicide rates rise and schools are overwhelmed by mental health needs, you can join us in bringing these topics out of the shadows.
Read more from the series

The "Kids in Crisis" series examines barriers to mental health care and seeks solutions. As teen suicide rates rise and schools are overwhelmed by mental health needs, you can join us in bringing these topics out of the shadows.
Read more from the series

When Merqueesha returned to Milwaukee in an attempt to make peace with her daughter's death, she found boxes full of her poetry, artwork and gadgets she engineered.

If someone saw only the fun and creative side of Na'imah, it was easy to miss her challenges. But her mother saw them.

Merqueesha first broached the subject of therapy with her daughter when Na'imah was in second grade. She'd been missing her absent father and drawing pictures of children crying, mouths wide open in pain. But Na'imah didn't want to go.

In fourth grade, things were getting worse. Na'imah lit an indoor plant on fire in the lobby of her apartment building. Her primary care doctor was alarmed and put her on a waiting list for an intensive day treatment program that would offer therapy and support groups.

In fifth grade, Na'imah spent six months in that program, then started receiving in-home therapy twice a week. It was helping, Merqueesha said. Na'imah was doing better in school and opening up. She shared suicidal thoughts, but Merqueesha thought she was working through them.

In sixth grade, that program ran its course. Na'imah was referred to a clinic for less frequent visits. She went a few times, but it wasn't enough, her mother said.

In eighth grade, Merqueesha said she pleaded with Na'imah's doctor to reinstate in-home therapy but was told she no longer qualified.

On the night of Jan. 16, Na'imah didn't want to go to bed.

"My baby would have a stare," Merqueesha said. "That very night she completed suicide, she had a stare that penetrated my soul."

Merqueesha and her daughter usually exchanged hugs and I-love-you's right before bed, but that night, Na'imah was up late and Merqueesha told her firmly that she needed to go to sleep. She figured the stare was coming from anger about having to go to bed.

"The last conversation my daughter and I had, I was fussing to her about getting ready to go to bed," Merqueesha said. "That night was not the night to talk to her like that. She needed something different."

The next morning, Merqueesha went to get her daughter up for school. She found Na'imah hanging in her closet.

"The first time I ever saw a dead body was my child's body," Merqueesha recalled. Shestared into the grass of her Milwaukee backyard. "I'm 37 years old; I had never seen a dead body."

"And I woke up that morning and got my child. And took her down. And laid her body down."

Searching for answers

Nationally, 2,061 teens ages 15 to 19 committed suicide in 2015, according to data released in August by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While boys are significantly more likely than girls to kill themselves, suicides by girls are on the rise. Between 2007 and 2015, the suicide rate for boys rose by nearly a third, and it doubled for girls. Six of the seven suicides in Milwaukee County this year were girls.

Every suicide is unique. And the death of a young person — by his or her own hand —often sends friends and family on a desperate search for answers. But, often, they are hard to come by, even for the experts, said Eric Caine, co-director of the Center for the Study of Prevention of Suicide at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York.

The spike in teen suicides — and suicides overall since 2000 — is almost certainly tied to the rise in the number of attempts and the increasing lethality of the methods used, including, more potent drugs, he said.

But what is underlying the increase in attempts?

Researchers tend to point to risk factors, and there are many: mental illness, substance abuse, exposure to violence, economic instability, barriers to community and health care services, access to lethal weapons and substances, and the stigma associated with seeking care, to name a few.

Suicide rates tend to climb in times of economic turmoil, such as the recent Great Recession. Young people are not immune to the stresses that engulf families beset by job losses and foreclosures.

There is also much speculation about the role of social media. Recent studies have shown that victims of cyberbullying experience suicidal thoughts more often than victims of traditional bullying.

“It can exacerbate risk factors like bullying, sensationalizing high-profile suicides or providing harmful content about suicide methods,” said Tom Simon, a researcher with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But it also has great potential for reducing risk by helping to connect people, facilitating relationships … and correcting myths about suicide.”

New research is focusing on the role of childhood trauma.

"In the urban communities it's driven by incarceration, poverty, violence," said Brenda Wesley of the Greater Milwaukee affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, who is working with young people to end the stigma around mental health issues.

"In the suburbs, a lot of issues are more anxiety related, with opioid and heroin use and pressures suburban kids are under," she said.

They all have something in common: "All of it affects the brain. Each child's brain is being impacted by the stressors."

Because there is no single cause of suicide, there is no simple solution.

The CDC has urged a broad strategy that ranges from strengthening families' economic supports and teaching problem-solving skills to improving mental health insurance coverage, both before and after a suicide attempt.

"The whole challenge in dealing with kids who are suicidal — and adults, too, for that matter — is not letting them fall through the cracks," said Caine.

Finding a way forward

Wesley, of the Alliance on Mental Illness, has written an original play, "Pieces, In My Own Voice," which she uses as a platform for reaching some of these kids. It's one of countless grassroots efforts in the region to identify kids who need help, encourage them to talk about it, and connect them with support.

Funding from the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment at the Medical College of Wisconsin is backing several new efforts to improve youth mental health starting from infancy.

One of the initiatives, the Milwaukee Coalition for Children's Mental Health, is planning to collaborate with community health workers and families to spread awareness about mental health over the next five years, with the hope of empowering more people to be able to identify possible mental health issues and seek help.

Another organization, Prevent Suicide Greater Milwaukee, is exploring a school-based peer-to-peer counseling program called Hope Squad that is now being piloted in Utah. The idea is to train teens in schools to recognize the signs of suicide and equip them to go to a trusted adult if they think a student is in danger.

"Peer support for this age group is huge," said Sara Kohlbeck, assistant director of the Medical College of Wisconsin's Injury Research Center.

Na'imah's older cousin, Erica Williams-Clark, is a perfect example. She learned a lot from Na'imah: primarily, that depression is nothing to be ashamed of.

"When people think of someone having a mental disorder, I don't want them to think they're crazy or out of control," Erica said. "Don't make them feel like they have to be normal, because none of us is normal. Treat them like they're extraordinary, like everyone is."

Erica, a senior at Milwaukee High School of the Arts, tries to pass that lesson on to peers. One of her friends, who saw a psychiatrist after Erica's urging, ended up getting a mental health diagnosis because of it.

After high school, Erica plans to go on to study mental health in Na'imah's honor.

"I believe early intervention is better than anything," Erica said. "Na'imah was not mentally stable, and that's better to know when they're younger so something like this doesn't happen to other children."

Rory Linnane is a reporter for the USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. Annysa Johnson is a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Call or text for help

If you are dealing with suicidal thoughts, reach out to a helpline:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-TALK (8255)

Mobile Urgent Treatment Team for Milwaukee County residents: (414) 257-7621

National Crisis Text Line: Text "Hopeline" to 741-741

If you're worried someone you know may be suicidal, do not leave them alone. Remove potential dangers, such as weapons, sharp objects, alcohol and drugs. Seek help from a professional, take the person to an emergency room, or contact a helpline.

Look for warning signs

The following are warning signs that someone may be considering suicide, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: